Scenes In A Different Hospital
by tv'slasthope
Summary: The story of the internship and residency of my original character Matthew Sullivan. Who is Matthew Sullivan and what was his internship like? This story details that time before moving to my House, M.D. story Scenes of Recovery. Enjoy.


**Scenes in a Different Hospital**

**Main Characters:** All of them, including my character Matthew Sullivan. There may also be an appearance by a certain red head, Addison Montgomery.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own nor make any claim to the television series Grey's Anatomy. Those rights belong to Shonda Rhimes and the ABC Television Network.

**Synopsis:** Scenes of my character Matthew Sullivan's tenure at Seattle Grace Hospital. Matthew Sullivan is my character who appears in my House, M.D. story "Scenes of Recovery." The time period is some time during seasons four and five of Grey's Anatomy. Sullivan mentioned that his residency took place in Seattle and this story catalogues his experience there before his eventual return to New Jersey.

_**Day 1: Seattle Grace Hospital, Seattle, Washington**_

The locker room was loud, noisy and completely without privacy. He hadn't the strength to begin changing from his street clothes and into his scrubs. He had come from far way and even in a hospital locker room he felt uncomfortable. He felt uncomfortable in this new city and he felt uncomfortable in this unknown hospital. He was far away from familiar surroundings and family. For the first time he felt alone, for the first time he understood what the phrase "being on your own" really meant. He looked to his right and then his left. Now or never he supposed as he laid his bag down on the ground and began to remove his coat.

"Hey, you better hurry, or you'll be late for rounds." A very enthusiastic brunette said to him, as if she was skipping around in joy all around the locker room. He felt oddly taken aback by her cheerfulness and her ear-to-ear smile with bright wide eyes. He didn't normally meet women like her. Was "woman" even the most appropriate word to describe her at this point? She looked like she was a baby.

"Yeah, I'll be doing that. Thanks." Sullivan replied as he pushed his coat into his locker. The girl extended her hand to him.

"I'm Alexandra Grey. But everyone calls me Lexie." She said cheerfully. He looked at her hand and decided to accept it and shook it firmly. She may be overly cheery, but he needed to start making friends. Might as well break the ice with an over the top cheery person than say an emotionally dead person.

"I'm Matthew Sullivan. You can just call me Sullivan."

"Is it alright if I just call you Matt?" Lexie asked.

"Sure." He said with a smile as he unbuttoned and removed his shirt and placed it in the locker. He wore a long sleeve gray cotton shirt underneath and he quickly pulled his scrub shirt on.

"Where are you from?" Lexie asked.

"Why do you ask?" Sullivan asked as he kicked off his regular shoes so that he could put his sneakers on.

"You don't sound like you are from around here. I can hear it in your voice, but I can't place where."

"Could you give me a second here? You're making me feel like it's my first day of gym class." Sullivan asked as he prepared to take his pants off so that he could put on his scrub pants.

"OH! Sorry." Lexie quickly said as she whirled on her foot and turned around. Sullivan quickly kicked off his jeans and then just as quickly pulled on his scrubs and tied them at the waist.

"Okay." Sullivan said as he sat down and started putting on his sneakers.

"Hey, George." Lexie greeted as Sullivan turned his eyes to see whom she was talking to.

"Morning, Lexie." The one named George replied with a small smile. From Sullivan's point of view, his eyes were met with what looked like a short, emo, and annoying looking man who did not even look like a man. Sullivan took an instant dislike to him.

"So where are you from?" Lexie said, looking back.

"New Jersey." Sullivan replied as he finished tying his shoelaces and packed his shoes into his bag.

"New Jersey! New Jersey!" Lexie repeated. Sullivan looked back at her weirdly. "How does it feel to come from one of the most polluted states?" A finger suddenly appeared in front of Lexie's face with a gold ring with a red stone on his ring finger, staring back at her face. She could read "Fordham University" on the oval of the ring.

"That's my state and home you're talking about, you obnoxious twit. Shut up!" He ordered back at her, causing Lexie to quickly close her mouth. Sullivan pulled back and stuffed his belongings into his locker. He then removed his ring and placed it in the breast pocket of his dress shirt.

The door to the locker room opened and Sullivan pushed his shirt into his locker and hung it on a hook.

"I need assistance with a craniotomy." The voice of Derek Shepherd called into the room to be met by raised hands by the surrounding young and eager doctors. Sullivan hesitated behind the door of his locker, a pensive and tense look on his features as he waited. "You and you." Shepherd said choosing two doctors and then he quickly left the room. Sullivan pulled his head away and worked on folding his pants over.

Still stunned, Lexie finally found her voice, "I was just making a jok-''

"What is wrong with you!?" Sullivan angrily asked as he turned and looked intensely into her eyes, "I told you to shut up. I don't think you're funny. Who the hell raised you? Is this how you always start off a conversation when you meet a stranger?" Sullivan asked angrily as he went back to making sure everything was secure in his locker while pulling out his white lab coat, beeper, cell phone, his glasses and stethoscope.

"I'm-''

"Just drop it. Go away." Sullivan replied, cutting her off. He slammed the locker shut, locking it and he walked off to another part of the locker room leaving Lexie where she was. He walked over to the sinks and looked himself in the mirror. "Too close." He said to himself as he quickly washed his hands.

"Rounds, people!" The voice of a female resident called. Sullivan looked to see people quickly filing out of the locker room. He saw the surprised Lexie Grey take a quick look at where he was and then look nervously out the door as she made her way. He looked at himself in the mirror one more time.

"Here we go." He said to himself as he joined in step with the other interns.

*****

He had gotten through the day well enough. He began by meeting ambulances at the door to the emergency room, performed sutures on people's arms, legs, heads and other areas of the body he did not know could get cut. He helped Dr. Torres by using the defibrillator to bring a patient back to life. He ran errands for his resident, Alex Karev. He was even lucky enough to observe and assist with an emergency surgery with Dr. Torres who repaired an artery in a woman's leg. He had been conversing with her somewhat in the operating room. But he immediately became quiet when he saw Mark Sloan enter the room. Thankfully, she did not bother to introduce him to Sloan. Mark Sloan was one of the last people he wanted to see today.

Sullivan had just put a chart down when he saw that Lexie girl again, being yelled at by her resident. From a distance and from what he could tell from the resident's body, it sounded mean and somewhat unprofessional. He watched a sad look appear on Lexie's face, but he had to move on. The day was too busy and he had a lot to do before the end of his shift. He put the chart back into its slot at the nurse's station, put his pen back into his coat pocket and rushed down the hall to get back to the emergency room entrance.

Mark Sloan did not have to look up to know that a person was rushing. He moved to the side without breaking his concentration from the chart he was writing on, allowing one of the new interns to rush past. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark saw a head of dirty blonde hair. He stopped what he was doing to look at the person who had rushed by. He looked down the hallway and saw that he was gone. He looked back down at his chart and then turned back down the hall.

"Nah!" He said to himself as he walked to the nurses' station to get another chart.

******

_**End of the First Week**_

It was probably one of the roughest, longest and most exhausting experiences of his life he thought to himself as he left the hospital to only be met by a cold wet drizzle. "Wonderful." He thought to himself, how appropriate. "I hate this place." He scoffed out loud. It never rained this much back in Jersey, the rain was not helping his exhaustive behavior.

He was looking forward to at least a few days of rest until the rat race began again in the terrible contest of finding ways to stand in on surgeries. He hated that aspect of it, but it had to be done if he were going to learn anything. He stood under the hospital over pass, waiting to see if there would be any change in the weather so that he could at least get to his car without getting too wet.

He looked around, looking back and forth across the parking lot and how it was just drowned in rain. His vision was coming back when he saw a lone person, a woman, standing in the rain. Just, standing and allowing herself to get drenched. He thought he recognized who it was, but he wasn't sure. Why was she just standing there? Sullivan put his things down and walked tentatively forward, pulling the hood of his sweater over his head.

"Hey, what are you doing?" He asked. She turned her head, her hair pulled back, soaked and sticking to her head.

"Oh, it's you. Nothing, nothing at all." Lexie replied. She looked like she had been crying.

"Are you alright? Why are you standing out in the rain like this?" Sullivan asked.

"Like you care! It doesn't matter, mind your own business." She turned away from him again, ignoring him.

"Look, is this from what happened the first day? I'm sorry about that." Sullivan replied.

"I'm not really in the mood, okay. I've had the week from hell and I feel like crap. Don't try to apologize because I know you don't really mean it."

"What? I do mean it! I'm trying to say I'm sorry for my behavior."

"I don't believe you. You're just like everyone else in this cutthroat hell hole."

"Wait, I…"

"I just wanted to try and be nice, to just find someone to talk to me. It's not my fault that I had to come back here and not do my internship where I originally wanted to!" She yelled.

"Look, you're kind freaking out right now…"

"And I am not freaking out! …okay maybe I am. But can you blame me? My mother has just died, I think my father is becoming an alcoholic, I have to a tough resident who hates me and OH, on top of it all, I find out I have a half sister who works here and she hates me!"

"Okay, now even I have to admit that's a lot." Sullivan replied. Lexie breathed, and put her hand on her forehead, somewhat overwhelmed by the recent events in her life. She looked like she was on the brink of tears again. Sullivan slowly advanced forward.

He spoke to her in a calm, soothing voice, "Okay, okay, please just listen for a second. You're dealing with a lot. But, could you, could you just come back in over the overpass? You're getting all wet and then you'll have something far worse to deal with."

"You can't get a cold from standing in the rain; it's an old wives tale." Lexie informed.

"It's still a good piece of advice. Come on." Sullivan prompted. Lexie had her arms crossed, but she allowed herself to follow Sullivan's prompting, and he got her back under the over pass. Sullivan put his book bag down.

"If you'll permit me, may I give you my jacket?"

Lexie looked back surprised, "Um, sure of course, I guess." She said with an embarrassed smile. Sullivan removed his jacket and threw it around her shoulders.

"There, you got a little extra warmth. I'm sorry; I'm not very good with introductions. I'm told I can be…one sided sometimes even narrow minded."

"And you're a jerk about being protective of your state too." Lexie added.

"That too." Sullivan replied with a smile. "So it looks like we need new introductions. "Hi, I'm Matt Sullivan. You can call me Matt, I'm from New Jersey." Sullivan extended his hand, which she was tentative at taking first, but then she took it firmly.

"Ale…Lexie, Lexie Grey."

*******

_**Three Weeks Later **_

"The next one that's coming in is mine, Jersey Boy!" Lexie said challengingly.

"You realize that we've been standing here for the last hour and we haven't had a bus come in yet. Plus you're starting to get really annoying, that's like the fourth time you've said that. Do you ever get tired of that?"

"Nope!" Lexie said with a smile. Sullivan smiled back, glad that he had become friends with her. He definitely found her more tolerable then most of the other peons walking around the place. Yes, Lexie Grey was one in a million of people that he could actually stand. Though he still didn't like that George guy. He couldn't understand why she liked to try and converse with him so much. Just something about him rubbed him the wrong way.

"Shut up you two." Alex Karev ordered walking by, shocking Lexie into silence. Sullivan was also taken by surprise, shocked that he of all people would talk that way to Lexie.

"Bastard!" Lexie said under gritted teeth, "I can't believe I slept with him." Sullivan turned his head quickly.

"You what? I didn't need to know that! Why?"

"I don't know." Lexie said depressed. Sullivan shook his head; that was one of the things that he hated about this place, the way people just randomly spoke about things they had done or would do. It was annoying.

Sullivan was just about to say something when the doors to the pit, the emergency room, opened and two stretchers rolled in. He and Lexie ran immediately toward them.

"What've we got?" Sullivan called, looking over the his first person.

The EMT quickly replied, "Two adults, one male, one female. Male is suffering from an epileptic seizure; hit his head on a counter. Gave him anti seizure meds, brought him in for a check over. Female is suffering from a burst appendix."

"What's come in?" Chief Webber asked running up, beginning his own examination of the patients.

"Woman with a burst appendix, she needs immediate surgery. Male, mid 30's, suffered from a seizure, needs an x-ray and stitches." Lexie informed.

"Very good. Grey, you scrub in. Sullivan you take care of the stitches." Lexie raised her arms in triumph at getting to scrub in for the appendectomy. Sullivan sighed at the prospect of stitches.

"Snooze you lose." Lexie said.

"Shut up." Sullivan replied as he began to open a chart book, sign his name and began writing up the patient's condition and what medications he would need. "Nurse would bring me over a suture kit." He called as he began writing it up. He looked up at the patient's head and then filled in the necessary areas. The nurse brought over the pad and then promptly dropped it in shock.

"What? What?" Sullivan called.

"He's bleeding from his eyes!" Sullivan put down the chart and immediately headed to the top of the bed to look more closely at the patient's eyes. He pulled open the man's eyes, checking the whites, but was only met by more blood spilling out of them.

"What is this?" Chief Webber frantically asked returning to Sullivan's side. Sullivan checked the man's vitals and pulse and then checked his heart with his stethoscope. "Alright, contain him; get Lexie back here and the EMTs. We have to try and quarantine this. It could be Ebola."

"I don't think is, chief." Sullivan said.

"What makes you think so, Dr. Sullivan?" Webber asked.

"I just checked his vitals and blood pressure, it is all normal. Plus if it were Ebola, there were would be legions and a lot more blood."

"You'll need to give me something much more to go on here." Webber said.

"Okay, he doesn't have a fever. His body temperature is normal. You can check it yourself." Webber began to check and examine the patient. "I think most likely this guy has a brain tumor right behind his eyes, or some where near the optical sockets. It must have burst a blood vessel or something and the blood had to go some where and it is emptying through his tear ducts."

"I'm convinced." Webber replied, "Get him up to neurology, and see if they get it out." Sullivan engaged the bed guards and he and two nurses began to wheel the bed away.

"Call up to neurology, tell them we need a surgeon to work on this guy right a way." Sullivan ordered someone to go ahead to tell a surgeon as he and the nurses wheeled the man to the elevator and grabbed the first one that opened. The doors closed and they were on their way up to neurology. Sullivan continued to monitor the patient's vitals and continued to furiously write notes.

"I think I saw Dr. Shepherd was available. This type of surgery looks like it's up his alley." Sullivan made a few final notes in the chart, and handed to the nurse standing nearest to him.

"Make sure the surgeon sees this before he or she does anything." Sullivan ordered.

"Um okay, what are you not coming with him?" The nurse asked surprised.

"No, it will be okay. Just go, get him up there." The elevator doors opened and he was wheeled out and down the hall to the neurology wing. Sullivan turned in the other direction, found a stairwell and quickly began to descend them. He shook his head all the way down. Yeah maybe he was sacrificing a chance to scrub in on a major surgery. But he didn't care he wasn't going to take that chance. He raced down the hall heading to the surgical wing. He ran past the surgical board and down into the scrub room, past the distracted eyes of Dr. Sloan and Meredith Grey.

He ran into the scrub room in time to see Dr. Webber and Lexie finish scrubbing in. Webber literally finished washing the lather of the soap off his hands and raise up his clean hands. His mask was already around his face. The man looked ready and prepared.

"Dr. Webber, do you mind if I observe your surgery, sir?" Sullivan asked. Webber looked back at the young doctor confused and surprised.

"I thought you would ride the surgery you caught into the operating room. Why'd you give it up?"

"It's not my intended field sir. I think I'd prefer general surgery." Sullivan replied.

"You're still young, but alright. Get a cap and mask on. You can watch while Dr. Grey and I perform the surgery. Hurry up." Webber said walking by and into the operating room. Sullivan grabbed a cap and mask.

"Why'd you give up your surgery? That was like once in a life time." Lexie asked.

"Hard to say, it just didn't hold any interest for me." Sullivan replied as he tied the mask around his face and followed Lexie into the operating room.

****** **

Derek Shepherd had been reviewing reports for his department when a nurse called him, getting his attention. She handed him the chart, but Derek pushed past her and began to examine the patient that they were wheeling down the hall. He saw the blood pouring from the patient's eyes and falling on either side of his face, pooling on either side of the pillow with blood.

"Get blood cultures, a C.T. and an M.R.I. I want to find out what I am dealing with before I even attempt to diagnosis him. And put him under, he might be in pain." Derek ordered.

"Doctor. Doctor." The nurse kept prodding. Derek immediately grew serious; he saw that the patient was only flanked by two nurses and orderlies. Where was the original doctor? He knew there should have been an intern with him. Where was the intern?

"Who was this man's doctor?" Derek asked as the man was wheeled to scanning. Derek was enraged. As soon as he found out who was responsible, he was going to find them and personally rip our their larynx.

"He's…"

"Of all the erroneous, stupid, imbecilic things to do. Where is the doctor? Who was the one admitted him?!" Derek demanded to know.

"Dr. Shepherd, I don't know, he's one of the new interns. I don't know his name yet."

"At least I know I'm looking for a guy. Did he say why he did not stay with the patient?" Derek demanded to know.

"He just said to give you his chart. He didn't say why he left."

"We'll see about that." Derek said.

"Sir, I think you might not have to do all the things you ordered. The doctor before already gave a diagnosis. I saw him write it in the chart." The nurse once again pushed the chart to Derek who this time took it. He immediately started to review it. He flipped pages and noticed the time when the patient was admitted, the first pain medication prescribed and a diagnosis spelled out and clearly legible. Derek flipped to the front and saw the name of the admitting doctor neatly signed in the appropriate place. The name: _Matthew Sullivan_ stared back at him. Derek was silent for a moment, contemplating. Now he had the guy's name.

"Doctor?" The nurse asked.

"Get the man into an operating room as quickly as possible. Just run the C.T. and MRI, I need to know if this thing is operable."

"Yes sir." The nurse complied as she ran off after the gurney. Derek immediately made a bee line for the scrub room. It looked like he wouldn't be able to meet Meredith for lunch after all. And this Matthew Sullivan had another thing coming as soon as Derek found him. But, the patient came first.

*********

**Day 23**

Matthew Sullivan was reading over the chart for Chief Webber's patient. He had been able to find a way to distract Lexie with another patient and another surgery so that he could look it over. A couple of times he almost bumped into someone. He stopped reading the chart and entered an elevator. Perhaps it would be a little safer in there and allow him to read the chart better.

He stopped, waited for an elevator, it came and the five people who were on it got off. Sullivan entered and the doors closed, leaving him the only occupant. He clicked the fifth floor button, where the patient was located; he had to return the chart. He memorized the patients B.P. and other vitals; he adjusted dosages and updated his own observations.

The elevator stopped, but not on Sullivan's intended floor. He noticed that he was stopped on the third. He returned his eyes to the chart and continued working, not paying attention. He heard the doors open and he could hear someone texting, but he ignored them. The sole person entered the elevator and clicked his intended floor. Sullivan continued to update the chart ignoring the other occupant. The man finished his texting and put his phone back into his pocket. He pushed the close door button on the elevator and then put both his hands in his pockets, waiting for the doors to close. Sullivan wrote another note on the chart, changing something that he knew had been mislabeled.

"Hello, Matthew." Derek greeted. Sullivan stopped writing on the chart. He straightened and then looked up and then slowly turned his head to the left.

"Hello Derek." Matthew greeted back as the elevator doors closed.

* * *

End of Part I. To be continued.


End file.
